October's Obdurate Observations Of Outstanding Ouevres

[Extollager]

Yes, Gollum, I was referring to Joseph Mitchell who write for The New Yorker. What I recommended is just a selection of pieces from that omnibus.

I hope you greatly enjoy O'Connor!

 

[HareBrain]

Recent re-reading, having dragged a bunch of books out of my mum's attic:

Crown of Silence and half of Burying the Shadow, both by Storm Constantine.

Just finished That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis. I must have last read this about twenty years ago, and got far more out of it this time. Its difference from anything that would be published today is so great that its old-fashionedness is actually refreshing. The author and his ideas are probably more of a presence in the narrative than the characters, but that doesn't distract from it at all. You can tell how good a public speaker Lewis must have been: he shows a rare ability to get across complex and subtle arguments in an engaging manner, even for someone (like me) who doesn't share his religious persuasion.

Also been dipping into another long-lost treasure, A Different Kingdom by Paul Kearney, which contains some of the most pin-sharp prose I've ever come across in fantasy.

 

[D_Davis]

This has been the worst month of reading the whole year. One dud after another.

Let's hope that Murakami's 1Q84 can turn that around.

 

[Extollager]

Just finished That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis. I must have last read this about twenty years ago, and got far more out of it this time. Its difference from anything that would be published today is so great that its old-fashionedness is actually refreshing. The author and his ideas are probably more of a presence in the narrative than the characters, but that doesn't distract from it at all. You can tell how good a public speaker Lewis must have been: he shows a rare ability to get across complex and subtle arguments in an engaging manner, even for someone (like me) who doesn't share his religious persuasion.

That is Lewis's "put-in-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" novel, with everything from his enjoyment of weather to his interest in the ideas of Owen Barfield getting its place. It is a great favorite of mine, something I've read a dozen times or so. Just to write footnotes to it would be an education in itself, e.g. catching the Classical allusion in a character's nickname--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet

Here is a comment on the novel by a sympathetic reader --

http://www.anamnesisjournal.com/iss...household-in-c-s-lewiss-that-hideous-strength

 

[Extollager]

This has been the worst month of reading the whole year. One dud after another.

I recommend a classic of some sort! ;-)

 

[j d worthington]

I recommend a classic of some sort! ;-)

Oh, dear...

Speaking of which (well, sort of) I am currently reading a selection of Ambrose Bierce's poetry, edited by Donald Sidney-Fryer, titled A Vision of Doom. Never read his verse before and, while I can't say I have been blown away by it, there are some things here which are really quite good, and occasionally passages which really are exceptional. There is also, as the editor comments, a tendency one doesn't often see with Bierce, for a certain tenderness which really complements the acerbity of so much of his writing, as both seem to have come from the same source. (He could also be a very supportive friend, as both George Sterling and Samuel Loveman -- both poets who benefited from his mentoring -- would have attested.)

 

[D_Davis]

1Q84 is taking this month in the right direction...

 

[Extollager]

"Uncle Einar" is a story in Ray Bradbury's The October Country. I skipped the first one, "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse," which I don't remember as being macabre. So "Uncle Einar" is either the first or the second story that isn't macabre as one reads one's way through the collection.

I was reminded of Kurosawa's late movie Dreams. Several of the dreams there are out-and-out nightmares,

and the film begins with two(the fox wedding, the dolls coming alive) that seem to me to be eerie.

However, the director includes a dream about van Gogh

that is quite charming. I think it's appealing in itself and its contrast with the other dreams contributes to the movie's effectiveness.

So it is with "Uncle Einar."

But I did wonder -- why Uncle Einar? "Uncle" from whose point of view?

 

[Connavar]

I finished reading March Violets by Philip Kerr, a new author for me. This is his first book in Berlin Noir a hardboiled PI series set in 1930s,1940s Germany. It was fun PI stories with alot good historical details,realism. Alot info about Berlin streets,culture info that made it feel like German author,german characters and not another american,british author telling a story about those times. I will read the whole series at-least from this author.

Now im reading The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury which is a late read of my horror month. Seems like half of the stories are weird,horror and the rest SF or mundane stories about wit,humor.

 

[Extollager]

Now im reading The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury which is a late read of my horror month. Seems like half of the stories are weird,horror and the rest SF or mundane stories about wit,humor.

Any chance you could "blog" your comments on these stories over at the "Good Ray Bradbury" thread? Sure wish you would..... or here....

 

[j d worthington]

But I did wonder -- why Uncle Einar? "Uncle" from whose point of view?

This was a story which was original to the collection Dark Carnival, and it was the third in the series of tales featuring the Elliott family, "The Traveler" and "Homecoming" having been published earlier; Uncle Einar makes his first appearance in the latter of these, if memory serves, where he has an encounter with nephew Timothy, the main character of the tale. Again, if I remember aright, it is on his way back home from this gathering of the Family that he has the accident which is recounted in "Uncle Einar", with its aftermath....

And I finished A Vision of Doom... rather an eye-opener for those who think of Bierce either as "The Devil's Lexicographer" or the writer of Civil War or horror tales. There are some powerfully weird pieces here, true, as well as some savagely satirical pieces; but there are also a surprising number of rather gentle, romantic (in the older sense of the term as well as the more modern), and simply darned good pieces of verse here, including a tiny handful of tributes to departed friends which genuinely convey a deep regard for lost comrades....

 

[Connavar]

Any chance you could "blog" your comments on these stories over at the "Good Ray Bradbury" thread? Sure wish you would..... or here....

Sure i will choose the best stories to comment in that thread and the weakest story as comparison.

I hope to finish the collection later this weak after i hand in my literary exam paper. Its another collection full of wonder that makes my fingers itch,scratch my wallet to spend few 100 or so kronors to spend on 2-4 brand new Bradbury books

 

[Extollager]

"The Wind" -- what a great radio drama this story from Bradbury's October Country could be. Maybe it has been dramatized.

If you compiled an anthology about malevolent natural forces, this one could go in along with Leiber's "Black Gondolier" (if I remember that story correctly).

"The Wind" is also interesting as a presentation of the conflicts of male experience at the time the story was written. Herb has obligations to his wife and her world of conventional, domestic life, represented by the card club, but he also has a duty to his buddy (with whom he may -- I'm not sure -- have been in "the war") who represents the man's world of exploration and danger. Well, if they adapt this story for a new movie, it could be about two women, one of whom is married to a guy whom she met in law school and who doesn't want her to be so involved with her female friend from the days when they used to hike the Karakorum....

 

[Extollager]

Sure i will choose the best stories to comment in that thread and the weakest story as comparison.

I hope to finish the collection later this weak after i hand in my literary exam paper. Its another collection full of wonder that makes my fingers itch,scratch my wallet to spend few 100 or so kronors to spend on 2-4 brand new Bradbury books

Great, great! Thank you.

 

[Extollager]

This ["Uncle Einar"] was a story which was original to the collection Dark Carnival, and it was the third in the series of tales featuring the Elliott family, "The Traveler" and "Homecoming" having been published earlier; Uncle Einar makes his first appearance in the latter of these, if memory serves, where he has an encounter with nephew Timothy, the main character of the tale. Again, if I remember aright, it is on his way back home from this gathering of the Family that he has the accident which is recounted in "Uncle Einar", with its aftermath....

Count on JD to have the answer! Thanks. "Homecoming" is ahead in my Ballantine paperback of October Country, but there's no story called "The Traveler" in this edition... Worth seeking out by interlibrary loan (& if so, is it in any book other than Dark Carnival?)?

 

[j d worthington]

Here are the listings ISFDB has for this one:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?525393

However, my copy of The October Country (a 1962 second paperback printing) doesn't have it. It is, though, included (in a rather different form) in the "fix-up" novel of the Elliott family he did, From the Dust Returned....

 

[D_Davis]

IQ84 is excellent. Slowly but surely I am beginning to understand the Pulitzer and Nobel prize rumblings. It is a character-driven work of Ballardian and Phlidickian fiction with a more romantic angle and understanding of human relationships and desires.

 

[gully_foyle]

After dissing Acelerando, a colleague has lent me Saturn's Children by Charles Stross, and I am really enjoying it.

 

[Extollager]

"The Man Upstairs" in The October Country taps into what must be a near-universal fantasy scenario for young kids, or boys anyway: one person finds out that someone or some people who look human aren't. What do you do? Can you deal with their threat before they get you?

Robert Arthur's "Mimic" or Finney's Invasion of the Body-Snatchers or PKD's "The Father-Thing" or... it's probably a theme of quite a few entertaining stories. In non-fantastic form, it works in stories of spies, disguised criminals, etc.

Bradbury does justice to this theme. The colored glass bit is cool -- particularly when the boy goes into that upstairs room and sees through the blue glass what's looking at him!

 

[Rosemary]

I am now re-reading the last book of The Tales Of The Malazans - The Crippled God.

The series was certainly easier to read, one volume after the other, helping to keep the continuity. There was much that I remembered but some parts I didn't recall My favourite characters were still as I imagined, as too the ones I didn't like the first time round.
It also helped to confirm my belief that Steven Erikson is a great writer.